Topic: WiiU external hard drive

[DigitalGreenTea]

I noticed that when I power on my system, the harddrive comes on too, but it takes a few minutes after I've logged into my account and am at the WiiU screen for it to boot up register on the system. So when I initially get to the home screen, there aren't any downloaded games or the little USB icon at the bottom indicating a drive is attached. When I wait a few minutes, or go to another menu and come back, it pops up along with my games. Just an FYI for other folks who have harddrives attached and may be freaking out when their drive and downloaded games don't show up immediately upon boot up. I'm hoping Nintendo fixes this in an update, but as long as I know it's not a hardware failure on the WiiU or harddrive end, I can wait a few minutes to have my stuff pop up. 

Do you use a Harddrive without an AC Adapter? Because Nintendo recommends one that has an external power supply. That is because the Wii U can't give out that much power through the USB port because it needs the power for itself, it's not a PC. That could be why the Harddrive goes on when you turn on the Wii U and causes longer loading times.


I'm getting one soon too, the ones who use an AC Adapter have more storage than usual Harddrives - I think I'll go with 1-2 TB so I never have to worry about this problem ever again. Plus, these things are cheap actually!  :-)

[Razorkid]

I noticed that when I power on my system, the harddrive comes on too, but it takes a few minutes after I've logged into my account and am at the WiiU screen for it to boot up register on the system. So when I initially get to the home screen, there aren't any downloaded games or the little USB icon at the bottom indicating a drive is attached. When I wait a few minutes, or go to another menu and come back, it pops up along with my games. Just an FYI for other folks who have harddrives attached and may be freaking out when their drive and downloaded games don't show up immediately upon boot up. I'm hoping Nintendo fixes this in an update, but as long as I know it's not a hardware failure on the WiiU or harddrive end, I can wait a few minutes to have my stuff pop up. 

Do you use a Harddrive without an AC Adapter? Because Nintendo recommends one that has an external power supply. That is because the Wii U can't give out that much power through the USB port because it needs the power for itself, it's not a PC. That could be why the Harddrive goes on when you turn on the Wii U and causes longer loading times.


I'm getting one soon too, the ones who use an AC Adapter have more storage than usual Harddrives - I think I'll go with 1-2 TB so I never have to worry about this problem ever again. Plus, these things are cheap actually!  :-)

My USB 3.0 harddrive is AC powered. The problem has been fixed with the giant firmware update from last week. What was happening was my harddrive wouldn't be recognized until I went into system settings and then backed out again. Magically the drive would show up along with all my digital games. Previously, if I just bulled on and played something on disk, I would be missing progress or it would start up an old save. Now since the firmware update, I log into my profile and everything pops up immediately. Makes me doubly happy that it was a Nintendo problem (not with my 1TB Harddrive) and that they fixed it quickly.

[leahsdad]

I'm curious, why are you transferring your stuff back onto the internal storage? The bottleneck is certainly the WiiU's internal storage write speed for transferring stuff, but I doubt it affects loading time negatively for games.

Why?  Well, because I don't trust technology, I'm afraid of my harddrive failing one day and taking my save file with it :-)

But also, I realize that at this point, I was being silly moving everything onto the external when I had plenty of space on the internal for the 3 games that I own (Mario, Zombiu, Trine 2).   And I save myself from walking over to my media shelves, bending down to where the hard drive is, flipping the power switch on the back....

[Razorkid]

Ah, I forgot you have an enclosure. That makes sense then to avoid having to switch the thing on and such. If your WiiU dies, you still got a data problem. Get an external man! Mine turns on when the WiiU boots up and it feels so liberating having all that storage ready to fill up.

[PorkNBeans]

Just ordered a 2TB drive last night, I'm hoping they'll eventually allow us to record to the external whether it be game footage or via TVii. Either way I only spent 109 for the supported Toshiba 2TB, was well worth the cash in my personal opinion.

[leahsdad]

Ah, I forgot you have an enclosure. That makes sense then to avoid having to switch the thing on and such. If your WiiU dies, you still got a data problem. Get an external man! Mine turns on when the WiiU boots up and it feels so liberating having all that storage ready to fill up.

Well, it's easy to say "go buy a new expensive external hard drive" when I have a perfectly good enclosure and spare hard drive lying around.   Tell me, do you enjoy being rich and being able to buy stuff willy nilly whenever you want?

Disclosure:  Just kidding about the "rich" comment.   If you did a search on my recent posts in the forums, you would see that I just posted about comparing the internet browser speed of the Gamepad to my brand new Ipad 4.  :-)  Hypocrite, thee is I!

[Razorkid]

Ah, I forgot you have an enclosure. That makes sense then to avoid having to switch the thing on and such. If your WiiU dies, you still got a data problem. Get an external man! Mine turns on when the WiiU boots up and it feels so liberating having all that storage ready to fill up.

Well, it's easy to say "go buy a new expensive external hard drive" when I have a perfectly good enclosure and spare hard drive lying around.   Tell me, do you enjoy being rich and being able to buy stuff willy nilly whenever you want?

Disclosure:  Just kidding about the "rich" comment.   If you did a search on my recent posts in the forums, you would see that I just posted about comparing the internet browser speed of the Gamepad to my brand new Ipad 4.  :-)  Hypocrite, thee is I!

No, it's cool and I'm totally of the school of putting to good use what's lying around before buying something new. I've been so spoiled by Steam, psp go, and now 3DS that I'll happily invest in something that's gonna ensure my gaming is as immediate and convenient as possible.

[azeke]

If not i will just use my two old ass 150Gb IDE-hard drives with IDE to USB connectors. It's not gonna look pretty though.

So. Yesterday when DuckTales couldn't fit into Wii U basic fridge space, i finally did it.

It looks like this:

Luckily i managed to hide all that frankenstein thing behind my TV.

First i tried to connect that ancient hard drive to my computer to check if it holds some data i might want to recover from, but it acted up or something and was constantly reconnecting.

Then i gave up on that, and just connected it to Wii U and formatted the whole thing.

It works great so far. Despite that it says it's connected through USB 1 (!), it works at about the same speed as internal memory (Trine 2 loading times are definitely the same).

I had to mess around with saves a bit though, apparently you HAVE to place save and the game data on the same drive, and i honestly would prefer if all my saves went to internal memory, just for safety, in case my old hard drive will die on me.

When i turn my Wii U on, i can hear engine in the hard drive stopping and heads parking, so i think i will be just leaving hard drive power on 24/7, because drive's not working when Wii U is off and because i'm too lazy to mess around with these cables each time.

When i turn Wii U on, it takes some time for hard drive to boot, so Wii U actually boots up faster. Then it shows me some message that i should (re-)connect hard drives only when console is turned off and reboots again. By that time hard drive is fully operational and everything loads up as usual.

[toddra]

I have a question, what is the theoretical largest drive a Wii U could read? I have several different drives and one I will be allocating to PS4 when I get it and one to the Wii U when/if I get it. I just want to make sure I don't give the Wii U something larger than it can handle.

[TJ Spyke]

I have a question, what is the theoretical largest drive a Wii U could read? I have several different drives and one I will be allocating to PS4 when I get it and one to the Wii U when/if I get it. I just want to make sure I don't give the Wii U something larger than it can handle.

From their online FAQ (http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/systems/wiiu/en_na/system_external_storage.jsp?menu=general_info&submenu=wup-external-usb-storage):

If the Wii U has the most recent system update installed, it will be able to recognize a storage device of any size, but 2TB will be the maximum amount of storage capacity that can be used. Any extra capacity in the storage device beyond the 2TB will not be accessible via the Wii U.

[toddra]

thanks for the reply. all of mine are below 2TB so I will be fine.